King Louis XVI was deeply alarmed by the creation of the National Assembly – he hadn’t at all foreseen this turn of events. Consequently, he decided to meet with the few remaining members of the Estates General, but, most portentously, he had the National Assembly’s meeting room locked and barred. When the members of the National Assembly turned up and saw the locked doors, however, they weren’t discouraged or demoralized, as the King had hoped. Instead, the National Assembly was all the more energized and more determined than ever to achieve their reformist aims. Defiantly, they held their meeting instead on a tennis court – hence, the name of the oath – and there passed a solemn resolution that they would continue to meet, no matter what the King did to oppose them, until they had drafted a new national constitution, with all of their changes included. They also renamed themselves the National Constituent Assembly. The King tried to quash this latest development but it was too late, especially as the remaining members of the Estates General defected in support of the Assembly. From now on, the King was going to have to try and cooperate with the Assembly if he hoped to have any say in his nation’s government.

The July 14th, 1789 storming and destruction of the Bastille by the citizens of Paris marked the beginning of the “journées.” The “journées” were otherwise known as incidents in which groups of French citizens banded together to take the Revolution into their own hands, often through destructive and/or violent means. This pattern would persist, again and again, throughout the entire Revolution, culminating in and coinciding with the infamous Reign of Terror. After the fall of the Bastille, the National Constituent Assembly very quickly realized that it was no longer entirely in control of the Revolution; instead, the French people were determined to play a part and would continue to do so. The reaction to such events within the Assembly was decidedly mixed; many members were disturbed by these outbreaks of disruption, but many others (most notably Maximillian Robespierre), saw the “journées” as crucial opportunity for power and control of the building Revolutionary movement.

The Sepoy Rebellion occurred in British occupied India in 1857. The Sepoys were Indian soldiers who served in the armed forces of the British East India Company, who administered the Indian subcontinent directly prior to the Sepoy Rebellion. The rebellion began due to British abuses of the Hindu and Muslim troops serving in the armed forces and was quelled when the British government stepped in and began to oversee the administration of India directly (removing the East India Company from ultimate authority). The Sepoy Rebellion is usually called the First Indian War of Independence in India.

The Tanzimat Reforms were enacted in the mid-nineteenth century by the government of the Ottoman Empire. The Tanzimat Reforms were designed to modernize the Ottoman Empire and to address the threat of rising nationalism within the Empire.

Initially, during the summer of 1789, most members of the National Constituent Assembly were in favor of instituting some form of constitutional monarchy in France. Many looked to the constitutional monarchy already in place in England, in which the English monarch and the Parliament shared rule under the Magna Carta, as a good model. But as King Louis XVI continued to make one sociopolitical blunder after another, support for any government which included the monarchy at all swiftly began to evaporate. Increasingly, the King looked to be an untrustworthy, inept, and/or entirely disinterested potential participant and so the Assembly began to consider other forms of government, including more drastic types.

On June 20th, 1791, fearful of the future and acting on his exiled brother’s advice, King Louis XVI, together with Queen Marie Antoinette, managed to escape their Parisian palace. Disguised as servants, the royal couple made a frantic journey through the surrounding countryside, but just when it seemed that their freedom was imminent, they were spotted and captured by militia outside the city of Varennes. At first, the National Constituent Assembly tried to cover up the King’s near escape, but it proved impossible to conceal such a dramatically ruinous occurrence from the ever-suspicious French people. As the nation erupted in anti-monarchy fervor, the Assembly came to a portentous conclusion: now that the King had proven himself to be untrustworthy, it was no longer conceivable for the nation to function as a constitutional monarchy. The Assembly would have to abandon this plan and implement another governmental structure.

Beginning in 1787 and continuing on through the winter of 1789, urban and rural communities all across France endured frequent outbreaks of widespread rioting. These mass public protests (which almost always occurred spontaneously) were triggered by several national misfortunes, including abnormally cold winter temperatures and two consecutive annually deplorable food harvests. These two calamities, in turn, led to chronic food shortages – especially a severe scarcity of bread – thereby causing food prices to rapidly increase. Wage levels couldn’t keep up; in many cases, workers actually had their earnings decreased, which only exacerbated the overall economic downturn and civil unrest.

This famous image depicts the October March of 1789, also known as the Women's March on Versailles. The march was a protest of food shortages fueled by growing anger at the French monarchy, and it was led largely by working class women. These women can be identified in the image by the plain clothes that they wear, and while one woman on the left does appear to be dressed more extravagantly, she is more likely to be a member of the bourgeoisie than a royal like Marie Antoinette. The October March was a symptom of the same problems that caused other popular uprisings that year, such as the storming of the Bastille and the Great Fear, but neither of those events featured women so prominently. The Tennis Court Oath did not involve women at all, as they were not allowed to be members of the Estates General.

Image in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Image Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Women%27s\_March\_on\_Versailles01.jpg#mw-jump-to-license

The left-wing, right-wing political dichotomy stems from the French Revolution, when the French king's allies in the National Assembly sat on the speaker's right, and the king's opponents on the speaker's left.

The American War of Independence empowered the new country with self-determination, but there was no left-right dichotomy in the American government.

The Franco-Prussian War left very little lasting political legacy, although it had a profound effect on how military planners thought of military force.

Many philosophies, such as Marxism, emerged from the industrial revolution, but the left-right political dichotomy already existed.

The Meiji Restoration was a political change in Japan that saw an increase in the emperor's power and the fall of the Shogun, but the left-right dichotomy already existed.

The Girondists were one of the most influential political groups in the era of the French Revolution. Originally part of the Jacobins, the Girondists separated from their former allies in 1791 over a difference in goals and tactics. While the Jacobins were primarily focused on mustering support for and creating a new republican government, the Girondists were almost exclusively concerned with defending the Revolution from any and all opponents. The Girondists considered anyone who expressed doubt, criticism, or outright opposition to the Revolution to be an immediately dangerous threat, whether the critic was a French citizen or a foreign head of state. These opponents, so the Girondists believed, should be dealt with harshly, using whatever means were necessary – unsurprisingly, these methods were often violent. It was the Girondists who convinced the Legislative Assembly to declare war on Austria on April 20th, 1792. (The Austrian Emperor was Queen Marie Antoinette’s older brother and he had hardly been quiet about his hatred for France’s revolutionary zeal.)